


Underwhelming.

by HomesickAlien



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, this took me too long to write honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-22 21:10:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14317224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomesickAlien/pseuds/HomesickAlien
Summary: Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him that is alone when he's fallen, for he has no one to help him up. And, if two lie down together, then they have heat, but how can one be warm alone? And, if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a fourstrand cord is not easily broken.





	Underwhelming.

**Author's Note:**

> the new gacha murdered me in one shot and ibara didn't even get a card.  
> the summary is from the bible bc unlike ibara i actually read it lmao  
> 

A simple life free of worries… It’s a difficult wish to grant. It’s what his excellency wants, and maybe something more than just that. Something higher than God and at the same time just an inch beneath Him. That would be the perfect balance for all of them, like a Heaven where no one has to feel the pains of being alive, anymore. The real challenge is choosing how exactly to incorporate all their ideals into one perfect and beautiful mosaic. Nagisa is a terrible anchor, his mind is always wandering off to places outside his reach. He’s a surreal existence that can’t be explained well, that can’t hold down the humanistic desires of his partners. 

Despite that, he’s still the best leader in the end. Not just for his strengths as an idol, but how kind it is the love in his heart has seeped into all of their veins. Like the roots of a tree of life, they stand their ground firmly and gracefully, that even one loss, painful though it may be, leaves nothing but a nick in the ridges of its bark. 

It gives him a headache contemplating all of this. He can’t even sleep easily in the nights, not after such a graceless fall from Heaven. They have to try again, and try better this time. Maybe it was hasty of him to act so carelessly in regards to his enemy, or maybe he did all he could and still faltered at the finish line. He understands less and less these days where he stands in this life, but he can’t stop himself from trying when he’s gotten so close, time and time again.

Maybe it’s a waste of his energy to slack off in all areas but this one, to work so hard for something as make-believe and unreachable as Paradise. He can’t even reconcile with how much of their conjoined dream is his alone, that even if he writes it off as selfish he’s picking up a number of bad habits from the lot of them. His heart feels like it’s bursting apart, leaking with emotions he’s supposed to be suppressing. An intrinsic desire to feel love of something, he’d rather shove it all unto Eden than to the three of them and all their dense-ridden kindness.

But he thinks of them, too. Even if they resent him for the rest of their lives, he does what he can to find a balance between uncompassionate and sympathy. The scum on his skin is just a cover, after all; he could be just as good of a producer. Better, even. Better than their management or Yumenosaki’s own or any other company that believes they know best what makes an idol. What makes Heaven worth striving for.

For all the time he wastes thinking, his notebooks been left neglected in his lap for far too long, now. He stares out the window absentmindedly, watching the sun shift downward just before the expected sunset. The passage of time is as ephemeral as ever; he ought to have been conjuring up lyrics for a new Eden song, but nothing’s moved him at all since their first loss. It’s childish of him to dwell on something so minute. That he’s still alive only to keep pondering the past is just as good as asking for death on the battlefield. He should be taking such an opportune moment to improve, but he’s just a child after all.

As if he ever were a child. He could read the bible a thousand times, but the words still ring empty to the devil digging through God’s strategy. It was an image thrusted upon them by their agency, but it’s not as though he lacked input. It’s such a symphonic image to live up to, now, one he pretends to understand but only on its surface level. He is the poster boy of his own image, after all. The descendents of original sin, like he could ever learn from those mistakes. God’s endless sea of forgiveness is more an insult than that.

Ibara lifts up the book laid at his side against the window so carelessly, and thoughtlessly, the pages flutter about where he grips the spine and more than a few makeshift bookmarks fall out onto his chest. They’re mostly worthless little things, papers that have already fulfilled their purpose, with miscellaneous notes that hold no meaning to him now. The same could be said of the paper balanced at the top, folded up all neatly that it just begs to be unveiled even if it were entirely blank. Even if he already knows intimately what it holds inside its shell, he’s much akin to a child in a world so confoundedly large. His curiosity is always overtaking him, and perhaps that’s partly why he’s always failing right at the finish line.

It’s so nostalgic, a feeling he never thought he’d need a word for growing up. The scent of it, the barren sites, the rugged feeling of a battlefield, they quickly come back to him for just a single moment. And none of them are pleasant sensations, but they seem to shine a little brighter in hindsight. Like the way stars glitter outside the city-limits, or how strong the sensation of family is when he’s never known one before. 

Even if they weren’t supposed to be kids, they’d had childish hobbies of all sorts they’d fill up their free time with. It seems like they had a lot more free time together than separately, it’s a mistake for sentimentality to bleed into a soldier's heart. It’s such a terrible drawing, he can’t make out at all that it were supposed to be the two of them, but it’s endearing to pick at those little mistakes. He’d made those kinds of comments when they were just boys, too.  _ So there are things even the instructor can’t accomplish, is there~ _ . He has to catch himself before wondering if Yuzuru is still drawing such atrocities now, he can’t help wanting to doodle over this empty page of his notebook to see if he’s any better. 

Despite hearing footsteps echoing into their room, it takes just until the door creaks open for Ibara to crumple up the paper in his hands. Though any number of people might barge into their dorm, he’s grateful from the sound of his footsteps to know there’s only one person it could be. It’s not the normal sounds of Nagisa, though. His steps aren’t traced heavy with mud and dirt, or anything of the sort, so he must have been with another party this whole time. It’s impressive to think for even just one day he might contain himself, the enigma that he is, but it seems today would be that day.

Even though he probably ought not to, he lets his guard down just a bit, without ever confirming his suspicions. He doesn’t need to, Nagisa speaks up rather quickly upon entering.

“Ibara?” He calls out for him as he steps in, and two steps forward more he stops and looks down at him. “...What is that?”

“It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with, your excellency!” Ibara pipes up brightly with a smile plastered overtop his skin. He rises from the window sill, like it would hold some air of superiority for him to look over Nagisa. Not that he deserves it, not that he’s earned it, but it’s a pleasant little fairytale.

“It is simply shed skin, you know? There are more important things worthy of discussion, don’t you think?”

Ibara steps down from the sill, replacing his empty notebook with a finely stacked script freshly printed out. He presents it with pride to Nagisa, “I’m getting better at this,’ He says, “I would even call this my best work, you know?”

His smile is sly, but it seems recently there’s been a hint of sincerity to everything he does. There’s people he has to impress, after all, and people he has to surpass. And three people exactly he has to take care of, until the day he dies, or until he finds his happiness in them. It’s all he could ask for, a simple life without regrets, they don’t come often to people like him.

“...Don’t you ever go outside?”

“Quite often, I would say!”

“...For things besides work, I mean.”

“It’s an idol’s job to be working round the clock,” Ibara says, without missing a beat, “But if it’s what his excellency whims, of course I’d go to Hell and back, you know~?”

Nagisa nods his head, mindlessly writing off Ibara’s dramatically hollow words as comfortably as a bad habit. Somethings never change, no matter how greatly one wills it, people are all so predictable as they are bad for themselves. What they’ve found is a balance that keeps them steady, but it doesn’t much change the people they are at heart.

It’s neither bad nor good, but simply is. Just as their namesake, they uphold the image of Adam and Eve well, but Paradise less so.

“...Have you eaten dinner yet, Ibara? The school’s cafeteria will probably be closing soon…”

“Sure, sure. You want to go together, don’t you? Ah, what a blessing it is to be regarded with such trusting kindness by his excellency!” Ibara pauses, returning the papers to his desk, “That is, you always see right through me, after all.”

Nagisa stares at Ibara with the gentle look of curiosity a child might give. Though he’s not immature, they both seem to have retained a view of the world so child-like they might never grow up properly and meld into this world as they ought to. In a sense, it feels like being an idol is the only route at all, the absolute route to Heaven God’s kindly gifted both of them. Like a fate he can’t believe in, they’re both equally destined to be together. A perfect pair, it wasn’t so intentional, but it’s become so natural that compromise is inevitable. 

It’s not that Ibara wants to be a better person, but that Nagisa is the only one who seems to think he is. It’s only fair to give the foolish dog a passing treat, an animal so oblivious deserves all the help it can get, but in truth Nagisa isn’t oblivious at all. He’s frighteningly self aware.

“I used to be told often I needed to eat more, but I’ve never really wanted to. I’ve been feeling rather nostalgic today, though, so consider yourself lucky, your excellency!”

Nagisa smiles, slowly returning himself to the door waiting for Ibara to follow him.

“...You’re the one who should feel lucky. Eating is more of a pleasure for humans than any other.” 

“Is it really?” Ibara says, sliding on his shoes at the door, “But I think most of that pleasure comes from human interaction than eating.”

“...So you’ll only eat if it’s together with me?”

“I didn’t say that!”

It doesn’t matter how Ibara defends himself against them, they never listen. They always have so much to say, it seems Ibara’s words are entirely disregarded. It’s, perhaps, the only way to communicate with someone like him. Boys who can’t be honest are such difficult creatures, but snakes that can’t help but twist up words like pretzels are all the worse. Inevitably, someone has to give. 

But it’s beautifully quaint for him when he does quiet down, accepting the world as it is. Spinning and spinning without regards to him, that used to seem like such a cruel fate when he’d been left alone in the military corporation as a child, but now it seems like just the way things ought to be. He’s as close to finding his place in the world as a lamb to the slaughter, it’s incredibly ignorant of him, but the happiness blooming even at the end of a losing journey seems to outweigh all those things. There’s nothing to justify the belief Eden is eternal, even its source had been an ephemeral existence. 

He can’t help but believe in it, nonetheless. Whether it’s love for them or poison in his veins, he wants to share the rest of his life dancing with them. Even if the sentiment is only shared by Nagisa, a boy just as simple, it’s a beautiful one he repeats over and over again until it comes to him. 

The lyrics for another song. Something to hold them all together, so that they might remain idols for as long as they all shall live. 

**Author's Note:**

> comment or whatever.


End file.
